Edvard Munch Quotes

Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.

I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart's blood. Art is your heart's blood.

There is a battle that goes on between men and women. Many people call it love.

I do not paint what I see, but what I saw.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls.

A work of art comes only from inside a human being.

At different moments you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning than you do in the evening. In addition, how you see is also dependent on your emotional state. Because of this, a motif can be seen in many different ways, and this is what makes art interesting.

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.

The viewers must come to understand the sacredness of painting, so they will remove their hats as if they were in church.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

Through my art I have tried to explain my life and its meaning. I have also intended to help others to clarify their lives.

A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.

I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted ... the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.

From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation.

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart

My will exceeds my talents.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.

In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in Hell hanging over my head